


much too far out all my life

by strangequark



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Cannibalism, Drowning, Gen, Ladystuck, ritual cannibalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-01
Updated: 2011-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 07:34:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/305397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangequark/pseuds/strangequark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are Feferi Peixes.  You are seven sweeps old, abdicated-and-reclaimed empress to be, raised in the waves.  Today you are learning how it feels to drown.</p>
            </blockquote>





	much too far out all my life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [astrophrenia (closetplayground)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/closetplayground/gifts).



> Fanmix to accompany: [Much Too Far Out All My Life](http://8tracks.com/strangequark/much-too-far-out-all-my-life)
> 
> I now realise my Feferi's story was partially inspired in part by [Under The Sea](http://archiveofourown.org/works/280082) by Sockmonk. Much obliged.

You are Feferi Peixes. You are seven sweeps old, abdicated empress to be, raised by a creature of the depths. You have hunted omniscient beasts, come back from the dead, and learned how to kick your friend's butts at gratifyingly normal games. Today you have finally learned how it feels to drown.

Your gently fluttering gills seize in too-rich fluid as you attempt to walk through the ship. Every breath is heavy with tyrian and yellow blood. It sits in your air-pushers heavy as despair, exhaustion, the body you attempted to drag with you. You think fondly of Gl'bgolyb and her massive tentacles that would buoy you up when you were tired, whisper you stories of a gold and a purple city, and the great and terrible expanse of space. You've seen space, now, spiraling out and making you feel crushingly insignificant. It didn't hurt like this. Even then, you had looked to others to get you out of jams, waiting for resurrection despite yourself being the Witch of Life. You consider Gamzee, Eridan and Vriska, with their attempts to rile up the highbloods in your favour. Equius who outfitted you for this, despite your protests, and Karkat, poor sweet Karcrab, whose idealism and ancestral ties you have used. Mind running through a spectrum of allies (fronds?), you cannot bear to think of Sollux.

Sollux, spending sweeps huddled over his terminal, wearing himself down to blood and brain, double-checking, calculating endlessly to make this day happen, to get you and Karkat and everyone else here. He'd begun making sacrifices long before the rest of you even thought about the cost. You can hardly bear to look where these machinations have led you.

Attempting to get the upper hand on the Condesce in her own downed ship, you'd snuck through labyrinthine corridors. The personnel were long gone, other than the Helmsman. The mirror of Sollux, his twisted twin, body slack in darkly bioluminescent tentacles, impossibly handsome and old. You'd been warned in hushed tones, attempted to keep the information from Sollux, but ultimately turned to him for comfort., not understanding how one troll could use another like that. It sickened you the way his face entirely failed to show surprise.

"IIt'2 not liike we're con2iidered good for much el2e, FF," he'd said, turning back to his terminal. You'd wanted sympathy, matched shock, and he'd failed to deliver. It befuddled you.

Now, having run through halls and down innumerable hatches, you pause in the engine room. Looking at the Helmsman's similarly resigned face, you felt guilt settle, another creature attempting to rip out your bile-sac.

 _I pulled him,_ you remember _I forced him_ \---

\---you remember, 4 sweeps, flushed with exertion and joy and possibly something else, pulling Sollux closer to the edge of the sea.

You'd called, "Come on seally! jump in!" and finally pulled him over into the joyously dark waters, eager to show off your newfound favourite reef.

"Shit! FF," he had yelled, sputtering and kicking, when he surfaced a moment later "You almost drowned me!"

At the time, you hadn't known better, and laughed high and long, a bubbling sound that had elicited his all-too-common ire. You knew land dwellers couldn't breathe underwater, of course, but you hadn't known they wouldn't be able to swim. It didn't even make sense. Sollux had attempted to explain in a shaky voice, lungs working doubletime to make up for every breath he didn't take underwater--

"d-eare22t captaiin," croaked the Helmsman, pulling your attention back. His ravaged face moved in a parody of Sollux's unwilling smile, that shaky, croaking voice now sweeps older "ii can 2peed up. w)(atever it take2."

You felt nauseous, stepping back involuntarily over his cables( limbs?) attempting to reach out. You wished someone, anyone was here. You wanted Kanaya or Karkat or Sollux, to hold your hand and tell you the Helmsman would be alright.

Sollux? )(ere?

You choked back a sob.

You were as bad as her.

No comfort was worth Sollux having to see this, using him like this. An Empress was supposed to protect her people, to be a tool of the people. To care for them.

Nepeta had explained to you once that your cuttlefish didn't need culling, didn't want care taking. Nepeta had talked of wild things needing space. But, you had thought, she didn't know about the ocean. She didn't live it, breathe it like you did. You'd laughed at her, then realised, sweeps later, that the cuttlefish you culled were duller, slower than their companions on the other side of the nets. Horrified, you had let them go and spun a story about the nets breaking and being too much of a pain to fix.

You thought back to Nepeta and her wounded animals, and you knew what you had to do.

")(elmsman," you said, voice wobbling on the cold and removed shape of your words, "Power down."

Immediately his head slumped, in that same overtired way of all programmers. As your programmer's head had slumped when he'd finally made contact with the ship to allow this, to allow yet another violation of body and mind for the Helmsman.

Fumbling with your strife specibus, you withdrew a small knife, barely a trident at all. Straining on tiptoes, leaning your torso away from his unmoving body, easy enough with it rail thin and eaten away, you braced one arm around his shoulders. Slitting his neck was easy enough, though you couldn't manage a clean cut. This was nothing after one too many kills in the game, but the mustard blood still gave you pause.

You slumped back against a coolant tank, pleased that he looked slightly less pained, slightly less like Sollux, in death. Hoping against hope for a minute to breathe deeply, to clear the imagined blood from your lungs, you sputtered and waited.

All too soon, the looming silhouette of Her Imperial Condescension appeared in the door to the engine room, backlit by the blinking lights of a system slowly, finally powering down. Her mouth opened to release a glub. It was not so vast as ones you used to fear, but nevertheless the most terrifying sound of your life.

"C)(ILD YOU KRILL--ED MY MAT--ESPRIT. T)(--E ONLY THING L--EFT OF-" She paused, bent her fearsome predatory face down toward you. Her gaze made you cold in a way Gl'bgolyb's never did. "O)(," she chuckled, and you felt your face must look exactly like that of a lusus's prey.

"I S--EE. Well, descendant, I do )(ope t)(is was not your first kill. A pity kill. S)(ame t)(at's t)(e best you can s)(ow me. T)(en again, all you )(eiresses are the same in t)(e end. Bluster and pomp. T)(ough you do look more like me t)(an t)(e last one."

  


With this pronouncement she reached out and ran her claws through your now tangled hair. It's not the dark horrorterror her mane is, but it's substantial, and with her fingers woven in, you can't pull away. You jerked your head back and forth, then remembered the tiny trident-bladed knife in your hand, slick with yellow blood.

You swung the knife up and she laughed, a sharp cackle . "Fool. I )(ave bigger )(airpins t)(an-" It sliced clear through your hair. The tension on your scalp ceased, your hair slackened and fell, allowing your headache to pound inward unopposed. You dropped to the ground and back up against the only solid thing in the room. It's still the closest you've ever been to an adult troll and if he wasn't dead (didn't look so much like Sollux), your fear responses would have been going haywire.

You should have sent in robots like even Equius wanted, like Aradia suggested. You had wanted to do things the traditional way, to show you would still care for the Empire as is proper. Now tradition had you facing off against some version of yourself you're no longer sure you can fairly call more twisted or eviller than yourself. You leaned on the body of an adult version of Sollux, (your matesprit? moirail? is it even okay to call him yours ?); you can't remember the last time you were right about anything and your friends were wrong.

"I call," you said, brushing one hand against your belt, "FOR RIGHT OF C)(ALLENG---E" It especially pleased you how the words barely choke you on their way out, and you are even more pleased when her huge, predatory skull inclined in acquiescence.

She leaned in close and you pushed the button, that one secret button on your belt, held your breath, and hoped. Her Imperial Condescenscion, beginning to draw her traditional weapon, collapsed sputtering on the floor, disbelieving. Poison, underhanded, but effective. Potent enough to do her in. Her gills flared wide, sputtering in the smoky interior of the downed ship. "Finally," she choked, "a Sucessor who could outwit me. You're just as cruel and resourceful as I ever was." The trident came at you in one last, desperate attempt, and fell short.

She didn't deserve a proper entry to death, but having dealt with Gl'bgolyb and her sisters in the Furthest Ring, you felt you owed their first daughter the part of the ritual you could give her. The blood-pusher would go to matesprit, though you're not sure he counted. The major bile-sac, split between pale quadrants, would be likewise untouched. Any moirail had long since failed her, or been failed in turn. Your ancestress had no mate for the ashen quadrant, or so your intelligence (your friends) told you. And by rights, as the "successor who could outwit" her, who matched her in one terrible move, you had your right to the kismesis' share.

You haven't butchered anything with your claws in sweeps, and you scratched pathetically at her abdomen before finally tearing at it with your teeth and extracting her secondary bile-sack.

Choking it down, your lungs clenched and your vision dimmed along the edges. It was a bitter meal, but you were built to digest it. You gathered your breath and began to move yourself and your predecessor out of the engine room. It was no easy path. Attempting to drag the body of a fully grown troll behind you, you paused, and saw her reflection again looming up in one of the control screens. You started, unwilling to believe you hadn't felt her body move, then felt relief, realised it was your own face.

You screamed, a great proper glub with all the notes Gly'gloyb taught you to sing. You sang long notes of endings and destruction and despair, yowling to near bursting. You finally hit the one note you'd never been able to find before. You sang rebirth.

Knife raised, you drop the body, grasp the ragged ends of your hair, and cut. You are Feferi Peixes, abdicated Empress-to-be, and you're drowning in tyrian blood that you can neither claim nor deny as your own.


End file.
